Car-free Granville Island?

JB at Vancouver Interurban had a post last week that I’ve been mulling over for days. He floats the idea of making Granville Island permanently car-free. All the reaons for it are good ones. There’s that epic bottle-neck of traffic at the entrance to the Island, and of course the Island’s about to get (more or less) connected to both the Main St. and Olympic Village Skytrain stations by the shiny new trolley. I’d add that parking on the Island takes up a huge footprint of land that could be put to about a million different better uses.

But the thing is, Granville Island is sort of out of everybody’s way. It’s not a hub that people pass through on their way to wherever they’re going. It’s a destination. But when I think of great urban pedestrian spaces–say, Frankfurt’s Hauptwache or, as of this year, Times Square–they’re central. They’re hubs, with pedestrians, cyclists, and people on public transit coming in and going out in lots of different directions. Granville Island can’t be that.

JB gets this, and points out that without car traffic, buses could run right straight onto the Island. And the trolley will bring more people onto the Island. These things could help. And if all the land that’s currently taken up by parked cars were put to the right uses, there could more stuff on the Island to bring even more people down there. Hell, it’s got Lee’s Donuts, and that counts for a lot in my mind. So even though it couldn’t ever be a central hub for people, maybe it’s it’s got the makings of a great pedestrian space anyway.

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3 Responses to “Car-free Granville Island?”

I don’t think it has to be a central location, it just has to have stuff people want to do. There’s really only the one road in, so why not give that over to buses? Increase the frequency of the 50, the trolley is coming from the Olympic Village, and even walking in from 4th and Fir only takes five minutes. Instead of parking lots, though, what would it be? A petting zoo? Movie theaters? Green space?

Incidentally, I never get as far as Lee’s any more because the PICA cooking school comes out with its warm-from-the-oven croissants at about 9:30AM, and that’s some nice pastry.

I need to check out those croissants. Does the PICA cooking school do dinner? Veggie-friendly?

I actually think a movie theater might not be a terrible idea at all for something to bring more people to Granville Island. But that’s not something I can be very sure about.

But a couple of other thoughts: (1) The vendors in the market–do they pay any premium on rent relative to other pedestrian-heavy commercial neighbourhoods in the city? If so, that retails space is undersupplied, so expand the market. (2) What about office space? There’s some down there already, so why not more? That could bring more people onto the Island every day. (3) The city’s already worried about having enough industrial space, and there’s some already on the Island. Maybe there could be space made for another commercial industrial business? (4) People already go down there for yoga. What about other kinds of gyms or athletic clubs?

I’m just brainstorming here–I have no idea if any of these ideas would work. But the basic point of view I’m coming from is that space should be people, not cars. And that’s especially true in a region that’s boxed in by mountains on two sides, water on a third, and an international border on the fourth.